Boris Johnson believed Narayana Murthy was helping Rishi Sunak to become UK PM, reveals new book

UK Conservative Party heavyweights Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were not always rivals. As Johnson’s fortunes went down the bunker of partygate scandal that rocked London’s political corridors in 2021, Sunak eventually outfoxed other Tory prime ministerial hopefuls such as Penny Mordaunt to eventually win the spot of premiership at 10, Downing Street.

For the much of his premiership, Johnson saw his relationship with Sunak as that of a ‘mentor’ and ‘mentee’ and when Sunak eventually quit as secretary of exchequer (akin to finance minister) ‘without even a text’, Johnson was aghast.

‘Who the f–k does he think he is?’, Johnson is reported to have said with a seething reaction in a new book called ‘The Right To Rule’, authored by Ben Riley-Smith, the political editor of The Telegraph newspaper.

The book reveals that much before February 2023, when the Sue Gray’s initial investigation findings about Partygate scandal indicted Johnson of violating Covid restrictions to host parties at his official prime ministerial residences, Sunak had started preparing ground for his premiership bid.

“One such indicator came in late autumn 2021, when a special adviser to then Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis overheard the Chancellor’s inner team in a Westminster pub discussing the shape of a Sunak premiership. ‘They were literally plotting out who they thought should be in various positions in the Cabinet,’ said a source familiar with what was heard,” claims the book, an excerpt of which was published in The Telegraph.

The timeline of this claim is significant.

The alleged discussions related to Sunak’s premiership occurred even before December 23, 2023, when ‘ReadyforRishi’ domain name was registered online, the earliest previously reported indication of Sunak’s intent to canvass support for his potential premiership.

Meanwhile, for Boris Johnson who was still the Prime Minister then, Sunak’s potential plans of succession continued to create jitters.

Sunak as UK PM: What Boris Johnson believed about Narayana Murthy’s role

The book claims that Boris Johnson was prone to believing in political conspiracies.

“One wild and unsubstantiated rumour he voiced was that Sunak’s father-in-law, Indian billionaire Narayana Murthy, had Dominic Cummings on a retainer,” the book claims, while referring to British political strategist who served as Chief Advisor to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson from July 2019 to November 2020.

During the months of partygate upheaval, Cummings was not serving any official role in the Downing Street and had resigned in November 2020. Johnson reportedly believed that his former political aide with whom he had a fallout, was now working to boost Sunak’s political fortunes.

“There is no suggestion it was accurate. Yet ‘Boris believed it to be true’, according to a senior Johnson Cabinet minister cited in the book.

“Despite the absence of proof, the idea of great forces thwarting him – money, a rival and a former adviser turned nemesis all wrapped up together – somehow appealed,” the book says further, while referring to the way Johnson was being outfoxed by the partygate scandal as well as parallel attempts by his cabinet colleagues to succeed him if he was to lose the office.

“No doubt by 2022 Cummings wanted his former boss gone. He would release damning claims about Johnson in Substack blog posts after leaving Westminster. The idea that something similar was happening in private is not fanciful. But seeing a Cummings puppet master behind every negative story was incorrect. And so the narrative pushed by Johnson allies of an ‘orchestrated’ ouster – whether by Sunak or Cummings – is too convenient. It absolves him, and them, of any responsibility,” the book says.

‘The Right to Rule: Thirteen Years, Five Prime Ministers and the Implosion of the Tories’ by Ben Riley-Smith has been published by Hachette UK publishing house. Its modes of availability in Asia, Americas and Australia are not clear as yet.